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President Donald Trump has enjoyed a lot of personal-financial wins in recent weeks. In late August, a New York appeals court threw out a $500 million civil fine against Trump for running a fraudulent business, though the court’s judgment of fraud was upheld. And in crypto world, Trump has enriched himself many times over with coin offerings to his faithful that have earned him billions on paper. But he can’t win them all. On Monday morning, a federal appeals court upheld the $83 million penalty against him in the successful defamation suit filed by E. Jean Carroll.

On Monday, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously ruled against Trump, who attempted to knock down the penalty in the defamation case filed by Carroll, a longtime magazine columnist. The saga began in 2019, when Carroll published a story in New York accusing the president of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the early 1990s. After Trump denied the account and insulted her in public, Carroll filed for defamation. In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse and he was ordered to pay her $5 million. After he continued to insult her, Carroll sued again for defamation and was awarded $83.3 million in damages by a jury in 2024.

The ruling on Tuesday upheld the $83 million (plus interest) penalty. The panel determined that Trump did not “identify any grounds” that his presidential immunity would protect him in this case. They also determined that the damages were “fair and reasonable.”

In a profile in New York this June, Carroll, 81, kept a note on her desk on a legal pad that read: “What Will I Do With My 83 Million? I Am Going to Give It to Things Trump Hates.”

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